Dual battery setup question

[Willson3]

I am in the process of adding a second battery to my 2018 200s. I am going to upgrade the stereo, so I want one battery to run stereo, amps, LED speakers while we are on the sand bar all day and keep the other battery for starting the engine and whatnot. I guess my first question is can I hook up the stereo to the second battery by itself or do you have to bring all the "accessories" over with it? Do people typically hook everything except the engine up to the 2nd battery? Just want to make sure I understand how this all works. Thanks!

[jhnmdahl]

You can move just the stereo, but you might have to run a new line to power the head unit, etc., or run it off the line you ran for an amplifier. It's pretty common to just move all accessories over to the spare battery, and this is pretty easy to do the way Cobalt wires the boats. There's usually a big block of wires headed to the dash that can all get moved from the original battery to the second battery with a single wire, while the original battery remains the starting battery.

Blue Sea makes a nice add-a-battery kit with a switch and ACR to make sure both batteries get charged. I've got one I'm working with now, except that I'm moving the ACR to the switched side of the power switch so the ACR doesn't drain the batteries if the switch is off.

John

[SAB220]

starter battery and a house battery and label each

[Willson3]

You can move just the stereo, but you might have to run a new line to power the head unit, etc., or run it off the line you ran for an amplifier. It's pretty common to just move all accessories over to the spare battery, and this is pretty easy to do the way Cobalt wires the boats. There's usually a big block of wires headed to the dash that can all get moved from the original battery to the second battery with a single wire, while the original battery remains the starting battery.

Blue Sea makes a nice add-a-battery kit with a switch and ACR to make sure both batteries get charged. I've got one I'm working with now, except that I'm moving the ACR to the switched side of the power switch so the ACR doesn't drain the batteries if the switch is off.

John

I noticed there is only one large red cable hooked up to the current battery. How do you separate the accessories if there is just one cable connected to the battery?

[jhnmdahl]

The one big cable from the battery goes to the switch right now. The switch feeds a bilge wire, a starter wire, and a "dash" wire at least, and it's there that you'll be able to separate the positive lines from one another. It will become clearer if you unscrew the white plastic panel that the master power switch is mounted to - you'll see red lines run to different breakers and other places, and can figure out which lines go to which battery when you reconfigure.